Ya that chip is really weird. Each core is so minimal that people struggle to understand how to use the chip. I think something less "fanatic minimalism" would be better but hey that's just me.
It's not really "fanatic". The minimalism has a purpose: less transistors so less power, smaller size and cheaper. The previous designs from Moore focused on speed at the time when MIPS was what people were looking for (e.g. the F21 [1])
I can see this chip being used instead of "system on chip" (SoC) designs. Namely GA144 + a general purpose processor (if the "business logic" of the application is too large/complicated for a GA144).
When you look at typical ARM-based SoCs, a lot of the integrated controllers are just bit-banging stuff from and to peripherals. But this is all carved in silicon, and to maximize flexibility you have a lot of additional complexity (both for the chip and the programmer) for configuration. Plus, because those chips are often used in mobile computing, you have a lot of complexity to power up and down unused parts.
It seems to me that a GA144 or two, you have more flexibility (because it's all software) and low-power usage (due to its design). What this chip probably needs is libraries to talk to common peripherals (I2C, SPI, SSC, SD card controlers, LCD controlers, flash controllers...).
My understanding that as of a couple of years ago most of the “clones” had various issues from pcb layout bugs causing ddram access issues, to poor documentation and poor Linux kernel support. Also availability was often a challenge. Getting a product that just works and is well supported by a community is worth a lot imo. Especially for hobbyist, less so if it’s one’s full time job, but then why are you using these things?
Feature request; my third grader needed to work on certain numbers like 3’s and 9’s, also the random number generation seemed limited when I played. Also agree zen mode is needed. Also how about adding n seconds when a correct answer is entered?
Adding options for practicing specific numbers is a neat idea, will brainstorm some ideas for this.
Sorry the random generation seemed limited, I'll see what I can do. Right now it generates the grid numbers randomly just picking from 1-9, and the magic number is selected based on what's available on the grid.
Zen mode + lives mode are on the todos!
Adding some seconds to the clock for a correct answer is a cool idea. Will experiment with this one.
Hey, just wanted to let you know I took your suggestion and added a "focus number" setting. Feel free to check it out and let me know if that's the kind of thing you were looking for.
Consider a video game that consists of a single screen and when the player character walks off one side it appears on the other opposite side (same for top and bottom). The playing field in this case is a torus. Now consider the case of two connected tori; at any point the player exits they could find themselves on the other screen. Now consider a “foam” of many tori. Has this game been made? Or anything that explores this idea of walking around connected tori?
I kind of fell out of love with openscad. I couldn’t find a workflow that didn’t involve tweaking x/y/z and width height etc parameters all the damn time. If anyone has any tips about workflow I’d love to hear them.
I found that I didn't really do that once I forced myself to avoid hard-coding numbers entirely. If I only defined variables, and defined variables in terms of other variables, I almost never had to do lots of x-y-z shifting.
Not sure what your workflow is or what you're building so of course what you're doing might be more complicated than what I did, or not lend itself to that, but I've managed to avoid headaches like that.
It blows my mind that this wasn’t more widely publicized over the years. At least this is the first time I’ve seen it, and I learned vim a long time ago. Partly because if it was a choice between weird keys, may as well learn vim.
It blows my mind how many people need directed at the included documentation or config files.
Sheep to slaughter. Before anyone judges me for judging, instructions-included is pretty consistent across disciplines.
I'm not a mechanic but I can figure out routine maintenance/customization.
I'm surprised you, and surely others, arrived at switching editors instead of changing the editor itself. Not in the source or with compilation. The configuration.
I know you say partly, I just doubt there is any perfect editor. All roads lead to configuration.
Slightly off topic, but does anyone have experience using the book this is based on to teach or learn programming? If so what was your experience like? What was good or bad about it for example?
I used the Runestone book How To Think Like A Computer Scientist (I don't see any difference between the linked book and the Runestone one); completed the full book front to back, and have a deep appreciation for it.
I didn't have any interest at all in programming or computers until my mid-30s, when a colleague in grad school showed me some Python tricks that completely replaced a set of absolutely hideous Excel spreadsheets. My interest was sparked, but I struggled - there was some kind of mental barrier I just couldn't hop over in order to make sense of programming language syntax. This book got me over that hump and sent me on my way. Several years later, I've switched careers and work with Python professionally, and in my spare/hobby time I work on a variety of C, Rust, and Zig projects.
What I liked: there is no barrier to entry. For a person with only the most basic/cursory understanding of, and no real interest in, computers, this was huge: no need to install, get an editor set up, no need to understand anything about the shell, PATH issues, or how to run a script or work with environments or anything like that. All of that came later. I liked the CodeLens diagrams a lot, the visualization was critical to that 'aha!' moment. I think the book is well organized; the flow from chapter to chapter, concept to concept, made a lot of sense to me. Overall, the book gave me a sense of 'making progress', challenging me while keeping things light and fun and interesting.
I don't have any complaints. This book got me to the point where I was just skilled enough to automate basic and useful things, and interested enough to start diving in properly and learn how computers really work. Since completing it, I've been learning pretty much nonstop.
It doesn't really teach CS or anything, but I'd say it does teach "how to think about programming like a computer scientist". Few entry-level "practical programming" textbooks are going to address - even at a cursory level - formal languages, recursion, mutability and immutability, issues surrounding aliasing, HtDP-esque design recipes, composition, and so on.
Even if it's not the best (to paraphrase Churchill: let the clever ones have SICP as an honour and HtDP as a treat), it's probably how I'd introduce the "average" student to CS.
I'd recommend them something readable like Programming Languages: Principles and Paradigms (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-34144-1) that covers more ground and paints the larger picture while citing many original papers.
I have read the book in at least two programming languages.
I'm a huge fan of Downey for lowering the entry bar to solid logic and reason around computer science, particularly when introducing Python to novice learners outside traditional collegiate computer science programs.
For this reason, I've recommended the book to friends who teach or have kids.
What's great about Downey is that he brings together concise and clear writing with unimpeachable correctness, a quality that was missing from my computer science education, where the curriculum was set in stone and was decades old and written by someone without Downey's gifts.
The fact that this jupyter stack runs on a five year old android phone without issue is a bonus!
We are witnessing rail road tycoon, but for the solar system. The foundations set in the next 50-100 years will be the foundation of the human solar empire. Spacex has no competition for the foreseeable future. And anyone who uses them as a service provider will be quickly subsumed if they’re successful, as the present article indicates.
https://www.greenarraychips.com/
Apparently they had angel funding of some sort at some point.
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